Abstract
Implementation of strict policies for mitigating climate change has a direct impact on public health as far as the external health costs of electricity generation can be reduced, thanks to the reduction of emission of typical pollutants by switching to cleaner low carbon fuels and achieving energy efficiency improvements. Renewables have lower external health costs due to the lower life cycle emission of typical air pollutants linked to electricity generation, such as SO2, NOx, particulate matter, NH3, or NMVOC (Non-methane volatile organic compounds), which all appear to have serious negative effects on human health. Our case study performed in the Baltic States analyzed the dynamics of external health costs in parallel with the dynamics of the main health indicators in these countries: life expectancy at birth, mortality rates, healthy life years, self-perceived health, and illness indicators. We employed the data for external health costs retrieved from the CASES database, as well as the health statistics data compiled from the EUROSTAT database. The time range of the study was 2010-2018 due to the availability of consistent health indicators for the EU Member States. Our results show that the decrease of external health costs had a positive impact on the increase of the self-perceived good health and reduction of long-standing illness as well as the decrease of infant death rate. Our conclusions might be useful for other countries as well as for understanding the additional benefits of climate change mitigation policies and tracking their positive health impacts. The cooperation initiatives on clean energy and climate change mitigation between countries like One Belt One Road initiative by the Chinese government can also yield additional benefits linked to the public health improvements
Impact Factor: 2.849 (2019 Journal Citation Reports, Clarivate Analytics, 2020)
Lu, J.; Zhang, C.; Ren, L.; Liang, M.; Strielkowski, W.; Streimikis, J. 2020. Evolution of External Health Costs of Electricity Generation in the Baltic States. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. Vol. 17, Issue 15, 5265;EISSN 1660-4601; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17155265; [AGORA (FAO)external link; AGRIS - Agricultural Sciences and Technology (FAO)external link; CAB Abstracts (CABI)external link; Chemical Abstracts (ACS)external link; Current Contents - Agriculture, Biology & Environmental Sciences (Clarivate Analytics)external link; Current Contents - Clinical Medicine (Clarivate Analytics)external link; DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journalsexternal link; EMBASE (Elsevier)external link; FSTA - Food Science and Technology Abstracts (IFIS)external link; Genamics JournalSeekexternal link; GeoBase (Elsevier)external link; Global Health (CABI)external link; HINARI (WHO)external link; Journal Citation Reports / Science Edition (Clarivate Analytics)external link; Journal Citation Reports / Social Science Edition (Clarivate Analytics)external link; Julkaisufoorumi Publication Forum (Federation of Finnish Learned Societies)external link; MEDLINE (NLM)external link; Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series and Publishers (NSD)external link; PubMed (NLM)external link; Science Citation Index Expanded - Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics)external link; Scopus (Elsevier)external link; Social Sciences Citation Index - Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics)external link; Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics)external link; Zetoc (British Library)].